Quasi-Autistic Patterns Following Severe Early Global Privation
J. Child Psychol. Psychiat. Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 537–549. 1999 Cambridge University Press ' 1999 Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0021–9930\99 $15.00j0.00 Quasi-autistic Patterns Following Severe Early Global Privation Michael Rutter, Lucie Andersen-Wood, Celia Beckett, Diana Bredenkamp†, Jenny Castle, Christine Groothues, Jana Kreppner, Lisa Keaveney, Catherine Lord, Thomas G. O’Connor, and the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study Team MRC Child Psychiatry Unit and Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, London, U.K. Six per cent of child in a sample of 111 children who were adopted into U.K. families from Romania, and who were systematically assessed at the ages of 4 and 6 years, showed autistic- like patterns of behaviour. A further 6% showed milder (usually isolated) autistic features. Such autistic characteristics were not found in a similarly studied sample of 52 children adopted in the first 6 months of life within the U.K. The children from Romania with autistic patterns showed clinical features closely similar to ‘‘ordinary’’ autism at 4 years but they differed with respect to the improvement seen by age 6 years, to an equal sex ratio, and to a normal head circumference. The children from Romania with autistic features tended to differ from the other Romanian adoptees with respect to a greater degree of cognitive impairment and a longer duration of severe psychological privation. Keywords: Autism, institutional care, psychological privation, cognitive impairment, preschool children, social deficits, repetitive behaviour, circumscribed interests, sensory preoccupations. Abbreviations: ADI-R: Autism Diagnostic Interview; ASQ: Autism Screening Question- naire; ERA: English and Romanian Adoptees; GCI: General Cognitive Index; ROC: receiver operating characteristics.
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